coprolites – Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives

In a rockshelter at the base of a giant two-storey house-sized boulder, Jamie and Janet strike pay dirt. A few centimetres under the floor of this dry overhang are the tell tale signs of a prehistoric megafaunal latrine.

*We’re going on a moa hunt: bones and coprolites can be found under giant boulders like this one. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood.*

Jamie Wood and Janet Wilmshurst, from Maanaki Whenua Landcare Research, are deep within an ancient Fangorn-like forest at Daley’s Flat in the upper reaches of the Dart River Valley. Snow-capped mountains, tall enough to make you feel quite insignificant in the geological timescale, surround this U-shaped glacial valley.

The floor of this goblin forest, dominated by red and mountain beech, is carpeted in a thick blanket of moss. Put a foot wrong and you’re likely to fall down a crevasse into the dark unknown. Starting life as an epic rock avalanche brought down by an Alpine Fault rupture at least 1000 years ago (in what turns out to be the only case in the world of using prehistoric bird poo to date an earthquake), the area is now home to some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s precious and picturesque indigenous forest, relatively untouched by humans. It has escaped Polynesian and European burning, climate change, forestry and agriculture. The biggest risk are the pesky deer, which leave distinct browse lines in the forest understory – everything palatable below the line has been eaten out. Continue reading “Are deer the new moa revisited: the MythBusters episode”

It’s the depths of winter and I’m squatting in the snow, surrounded by southern beech forest, using a pair of tweezers to pick up fresh steaming deer poo.

*Pooper scooper: Braving the cold in the name of science, these deer droppings are a harbinger of a changing world. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood.*

My wife Maria, and palaeoecologist Jamie Wood, from Landcare Research, are doubled over in laughter, having just given me the official job title of pooper scooper.

We’re helping Jamie collect deer poo as part of a project investigating whether introduced deer fill the same job vacancy as the extinct moa in what remains of our unique ecosystems – an ecological surrogate to re-wild New Zealand.

This long-running and often vitriolic debate has become closely associated with the anti-1080 movement. Hunters have illegally re-introduced deer into national parks and other protected conservation areas, sometimes where they had previously been eradicated. An uproar ensues whenever a potential deer cull is floated by DOC.

So how did this feathers to fur debate start and can the latest Time Lord science help shed some light on it? Continue reading “Are deer the new moa: Ecosystem re-wilding or a flight of fancy?”